Former Life

I've lived beneath huge portals where marine 
Suns coloured, with a myriad fires, the waves; 
At eve majestic pillars made the scene 
Resemble those of vast basaltic caves.
The breakers, rolling the reflected skies, 
Mixed, in a solemn, enigmatic way, 
The powerful symphonies they seem to play 
With colours of the sunset in my eyes.
There did I live in a voluptuous calm
Where breezes, waves, and splendours roved as vagrants; 
And naked slaves, impregnated with fragrance,
Would fan my forehead with their fronds of palm: 
Their only charge was to increase the anguish 
Of secret grief in which I loved to languish.
— Roy Campbell, Poems of Baudelaire (New York: Pantheon Books, 1952)